One thing I hate about the China discourse is “Oh but the living conditions outside the big cities are the REAL China.” And it’s like, uhh, yeah, it is a developing country??? Fucking assholes
Yep, and because the CPC is actively trying to address the very real urban/rural gap, it’s merely a matter of time and effort before this gap is narrowed even more, to eventually eradicated. Even if you point this out to liberals, though, they often take the stance essentially opposing the China of the present for not being the China of the future yet. Their tremendous, rapid development still isn’t rapid enough, since China is socialist and socialism is treated with religious purity by westerners it must be perfect instantly or else it’s sinful.
This is why dialectics are core to dialectical materialism, and vulgar materialism ends up being similar to idealism.
Yes and it’s great that China is now successful in narrowing the gap, but there’s an obvious historic materialist and dialectical line of critique against this argument: this would be in arguing, that the gap was not just despite the overall rapid development, but the development was in part only this rapid because of the gap. The Hukou system split the working class: Almost three hundred million people still earn less than half of that which the privileged part of the working class earns, often live in cities yet do not have the right to stable permanent residency and have less access to schools, universities, public housing, pensions and health insurance. That created a flexible and cheap labor pool, reduced the fiscal burden on cities, increased profits, capital growth and investment. These are all things that contribute immensely to growth. So rather than arguing that the development was not rapid enough, one could ask wether it really had to be this rapid, or if it was really necessary to do it this way. I don’t know, maybe the answer is that it was necessary, considering the threat from the empire.
Edit: I held back with these thoughts earlier in a thread with libs, since they would misunderstand it, but thought I’d share since we’re amongst ourselves now.
Ultimately it’s a lot more complicated than any of us would like to admit, and these are complicated problems that both need addressing and careful analysis. Any decision made comes with tradeoffs. The Hukou system is one of China’s larger existing problems from what I understand, and while the CPC is trying to address the urban/rural gap and has made good progress, there’s a long way to go still.
Yes, I agree and it’s important to remember, that every imperial core country is much worse in how stratified their working class is, with for example agriculture often relying completely on very cheap and highly exploited labor from (often illegal) immigrants (eg US) and work-migrants (eg in Germany).
You raise some interesting ideas however when looking at the system as a whole I don’t think they are entirely accurate.
To start I think it’s important to note the scale of change in the hukou system in recent times. Cities under 3 million population have essentially removed settlement barriers, and even megacities are piloting residence-based public service access. This is a substantial structural shift reflecting changed material conditions.
The hukou system was also I believe an unfortunate necessity when it was originally put in place. Go to Mumbai. Look at Dharavi. One point seven five square kilometers holding over a million people in informal settlements with no basic infrastructure. That is what happens when capital accumulates without a mechanism to regulate the pace of urban absorption (the original reason for implementation of the hukou system). The hukou system, however imperfect, prevented that outcome. The hukou system functioned as a valve. It allowed industrialization to proceed at a speed that absorbed labor without collapsing urban systems.
It’s also important to look at the positives of the system as it remains despite its many shortcomings. Every rural hukou holder retains rights to a homestead plot and contracted land. This is the material basis for China’s near-elimination of absolute homelessness. When a rural worker in a city faces unemployment or illness, there is a place to return to. This safety net reduced the fiscal burden on early-stage industrial capital, yes, but it also prevented the formation of a permanently dispossessed urban underclass.
Was rapid industrialization necessary. Absolutely. Not only because of the very real threat of encirclement and containment, which any materialist analysis must account for, but because poverty alleviation on the scale China achieved required a massive productive base. You cannot lift eight hundred million people out of poverty through redistribution of a feudal style economy alone. You need jobs, infrastructure, technology, and the fiscal capacity to fund public goods. That capacity was built through industrial accumulation. The rural industrialization phase, the township and village enterprises, the gradual absorption of migrant labor into manufacturing, these were not arbitrary choices. They were the only path that generated the surplus needed for the later stages of development.
Finally, the gap. It is terrible. But it’s important to measure the rise in the floor not just it’s gap to the ceiling. In 1978, nearly nine out of ten rural Chinese lived in extreme poverty. Today, that number is zero by the international standard. The roof rose faster creating a gap, yes. But the floor rose from subsistence to basic security, from illiteracy to nine years of compulsory education, from no access to healthcare to near-universal coverage. Uneven development is not a moral failure in the abstract. It is the concrete form development takes under historical constraints.
A clear summarization of the fundamental components describing the materialist outlook, the dialectical method, and applying both to analyze the arc of history.
Mao explores and elaborates on one of the most fundamental concepts in dialectical materialism, the contradiction.
Checkpoint
What are some examples of idealist explanations, and what would the materialist explanation be?
What are some examples of metaphysical thinking, and how does the dialectical method improve upon it?
How can you apply dialectical and historical materialism in your daily life?
Finally, I also really like Maurice Cornforth’s Materialism and the Dialectical Method, if you can ignore the Lysenkoist view of genetics that was popular at the time. This will be more comprehensive than my reading list on the side of dialectical materialism, bur won’t explain historical materialism much at all, while the reading list does both.
if you can ignore the Lysenkoist view of genetics that was popular at the time
This is probably really in the weeds, but what was the deal with Lysenkoism? As I understand it, there was a tension between notions of individual genetic traits and competition, and vulgar Marxist interpretations of that as being somehow bourgeois.
I feel like the more reasonable approach to this, is to take a page from Kropotkin and assert that, in the process of natural selection, there’s a dialectic between individual competition and cooperation between species (mutualism, symbiosis, etc.)
But obviously Lysenkoism doesn’t really do that, so what was the explanation given, instead?
Lysenkoist views of genetics thought, to my understanding, that you could change one species to another, and do other odd pseudoscientific stuff, based on a vulgar view of dialectics. Lysenko had some backing and wasn’t a pure crank, but the genetics aspect has been proven false and the gene does indeed exist.
By that logic America is worse (which it is, but you know, just following their own argument) because at least China is trying to revitalize the countryside. There’s so many ghost towns around I don’t even want to laugh at it. It’s just depressing.
I saw an interview with an urban engineer in Louisiana talking about how climate change is already causing damage across coastal towns down there. The salt water from the ocean is coming farther inland than it’s supposed to, contaminating nearby fresh water sources. But what’s really a problem is how saltwater gets into cities’ pipes, causing corrosion. Entire buildings have become unusable because pipes no longer do their jobs.
Cities don’t have enough money to build/repair seawalls/levees nor can they replace pipes. So it’s only a matter of time before historical sites in Louisiana are abandoned completely and left to rot. And the problem gets worse as more people leave and fewer tourists visit because the state is in a death spiral.
Any sensible government would step in and help, but of course this is Louisiana so that’s a gommunism and the free market will solve the problem on its own.
And even then it’s like rural China is still better than rural anywhere that isn’t a rich western nation (and still better than quite a few of those too). These people should go to pretty much any developing nation that isn’t China and look at what life is like for rural people there and then see if they still think China is the worst thing ever.
rural China is still better than rural anywhere that isn’t a rich western nation (and still better than quite a few of those too)
I’d say all rich western nations rely on impoverished illegal migrants being abused in order to make agriculture work, China literally doesn’t do this and that already makes it better
As someone who has spent time in both I really don’t think it’s as different as people make it out to be. The only real differences are that cars aren’t so common, people have less money, and multigenerational households are more common. But even the small cities are far healthier than rural America from what I’ve seen of both. They have much more consistent access to health care, mostly ride scooters or walk places encouraging a healthy lifestyle, and are far from starving.
Conservatives do the same thing with America, lol. “Big cities aren’t the REAL America” like yeah sure Chudley, the 20% of Americans who live in the country are somehow more representative of the US population than the 80% who live in cities
Because a lot of people’s ideas about rural China is: “see people are POOR and DESTITUTE in rural China, the cities are TYPICAL Chinese lying, it’s all FAKE”
One thing I hate about the China discourse is “Oh but the living conditions outside the big cities are the REAL China.” And it’s like, uhh, yeah, it is a developing country??? Fucking assholes
Yep, and because the CPC is actively trying to address the very real urban/rural gap, it’s merely a matter of time and effort before this gap is narrowed even more, to eventually eradicated. Even if you point this out to liberals, though, they often take the stance essentially opposing the China of the present for not being the China of the future yet. Their tremendous, rapid development still isn’t rapid enough, since China is socialist and socialism is treated with religious purity by westerners it must be perfect instantly or else it’s sinful.
This is why dialectics are core to dialectical materialism, and vulgar materialism ends up being similar to idealism.
Yes and it’s great that China is now successful in narrowing the gap, but there’s an obvious historic materialist and dialectical line of critique against this argument: this would be in arguing, that the gap was not just despite the overall rapid development, but the development was in part only this rapid because of the gap. The Hukou system split the working class: Almost three hundred million people still earn less than half of that which the privileged part of the working class earns, often live in cities yet do not have the right to stable permanent residency and have less access to schools, universities, public housing, pensions and health insurance. That created a flexible and cheap labor pool, reduced the fiscal burden on cities, increased profits, capital growth and investment. These are all things that contribute immensely to growth. So rather than arguing that the development was not rapid enough, one could ask wether it really had to be this rapid, or if it was really necessary to do it this way. I don’t know, maybe the answer is that it was necessary, considering the threat from the empire.
Edit: I held back with these thoughts earlier in a thread with libs, since they would misunderstand it, but thought I’d share since we’re amongst ourselves now.
Ultimately it’s a lot more complicated than any of us would like to admit, and these are complicated problems that both need addressing and careful analysis. Any decision made comes with tradeoffs. The Hukou system is one of China’s larger existing problems from what I understand, and while the CPC is trying to address the urban/rural gap and has made good progress, there’s a long way to go still.
Yes, I agree and it’s important to remember, that every imperial core country is much worse in how stratified their working class is, with for example agriculture often relying completely on very cheap and highly exploited labor from (often illegal) immigrants (eg US) and work-migrants (eg in Germany).
You raise some interesting ideas however when looking at the system as a whole I don’t think they are entirely accurate.
To start I think it’s important to note the scale of change in the hukou system in recent times. Cities under 3 million population have essentially removed settlement barriers, and even megacities are piloting residence-based public service access. This is a substantial structural shift reflecting changed material conditions.
The hukou system was also I believe an unfortunate necessity when it was originally put in place. Go to Mumbai. Look at Dharavi. One point seven five square kilometers holding over a million people in informal settlements with no basic infrastructure. That is what happens when capital accumulates without a mechanism to regulate the pace of urban absorption (the original reason for implementation of the hukou system). The hukou system, however imperfect, prevented that outcome. The hukou system functioned as a valve. It allowed industrialization to proceed at a speed that absorbed labor without collapsing urban systems.
It’s also important to look at the positives of the system as it remains despite its many shortcomings. Every rural hukou holder retains rights to a homestead plot and contracted land. This is the material basis for China’s near-elimination of absolute homelessness. When a rural worker in a city faces unemployment or illness, there is a place to return to. This safety net reduced the fiscal burden on early-stage industrial capital, yes, but it also prevented the formation of a permanently dispossessed urban underclass.
Was rapid industrialization necessary. Absolutely. Not only because of the very real threat of encirclement and containment, which any materialist analysis must account for, but because poverty alleviation on the scale China achieved required a massive productive base. You cannot lift eight hundred million people out of poverty through redistribution of a feudal style economy alone. You need jobs, infrastructure, technology, and the fiscal capacity to fund public goods. That capacity was built through industrial accumulation. The rural industrialization phase, the township and village enterprises, the gradual absorption of migrant labor into manufacturing, these were not arbitrary choices. They were the only path that generated the surplus needed for the later stages of development.
Finally, the gap. It is terrible. But it’s important to measure the rise in the floor not just it’s gap to the ceiling. In 1978, nearly nine out of ten rural Chinese lived in extreme poverty. Today, that number is zero by the international standard. The roof rose faster creating a gap, yes. But the floor rose from subsistence to basic security, from illiteracy to nine years of compulsory education, from no access to healthcare to near-universal coverage. Uneven development is not a moral failure in the abstract. It is the concrete form development takes under historical constraints.
Thank you, this is very important context!
deleted by creator
Sure! I wrote a post that serves as what I hope is a concise introduction. I also have a basic ML study guide I made, the section on philosophy contains this:
3. Philosophy [~2.5 hr]
In order to better understand the later sections, we must understand Marx’s materialist outlook and dialectical method.
Webpage/.epub | Audiobook [~1hr / 1hr 42 min]
A clear summarization of the fundamental components describing the materialist outlook, the dialectical method, and applying both to analyze the arc of history.
Webpage | Audiobook [~30 min / 1 hr 9 min]
One of the best primers on the Marxist-Leninist theory of the unity of theory and practice to inform correct understanding.
Webpage | Audiobook [~1 hr / 1 hr 57 min]
Mao explores and elaborates on one of the most fundamental concepts in dialectical materialism, the contradiction.
Checkpoint
What are some examples of idealist explanations, and what would the materialist explanation be?
What are some examples of metaphysical thinking, and how does the dialectical method improve upon it?
How can you apply dialectical and historical materialism in your daily life?
Finally, I also really like Maurice Cornforth’s Materialism and the Dialectical Method, if you can ignore the Lysenkoist view of genetics that was popular at the time. This will be more comprehensive than my reading list on the side of dialectical materialism, bur won’t explain historical materialism much at all, while the reading list does both.
Good luck!
deleted by creator
No problem! Glad it’s useful for you, and I’d love feedback if you follow it!
This is probably really in the weeds, but what was the deal with Lysenkoism? As I understand it, there was a tension between notions of individual genetic traits and competition, and vulgar Marxist interpretations of that as being somehow bourgeois.
I feel like the more reasonable approach to this, is to take a page from Kropotkin and assert that, in the process of natural selection, there’s a dialectic between individual competition and cooperation between species (mutualism, symbiosis, etc.)
But obviously Lysenkoism doesn’t really do that, so what was the explanation given, instead?
Lysenkoist views of genetics thought, to my understanding, that you could change one species to another, and do other odd pseudoscientific stuff, based on a vulgar view of dialectics. Lysenko had some backing and wasn’t a pure crank, but the genetics aspect has been proven false and the gene does indeed exist.
By that logic America is worse (which it is, but you know, just following their own argument) because at least China is trying to revitalize the countryside. There’s so many ghost towns around I don’t even want to laugh at it. It’s just depressing.
And clean water is on the way to not existing (or already doesn’t) for much of rural America with the destruction of the EPA.
I saw an interview with an urban engineer in Louisiana talking about how climate change is already causing damage across coastal towns down there. The salt water from the ocean is coming farther inland than it’s supposed to, contaminating nearby fresh water sources. But what’s really a problem is how saltwater gets into cities’ pipes, causing corrosion. Entire buildings have become unusable because pipes no longer do their jobs.
Cities don’t have enough money to build/repair seawalls/levees nor can they replace pipes. So it’s only a matter of time before historical sites in Louisiana are abandoned completely and left to rot. And the problem gets worse as more people leave and fewer tourists visit because the state is in a death spiral.
Any sensible government would step in and help, but of course this is Louisiana so that’s a gommunism and the free market will solve the problem on its own.
their REAL China vs our hyperreal Heartland
And even then it’s like rural China is still better than rural anywhere that isn’t a rich western nation (and still better than quite a few of those too). These people should go to pretty much any developing nation that isn’t China and look at what life is like for rural people there and then see if they still think China is the worst thing ever.
I’d say all rich western nations rely on impoverished illegal migrants being abused in order to make agriculture work, China literally doesn’t do this and that already makes it better
As someone who has spent time in both I really don’t think it’s as different as people make it out to be. The only real differences are that cars aren’t so common, people have less money, and multigenerational households are more common. But even the small cities are far healthier than rural America from what I’ve seen of both. They have much more consistent access to health care, mostly ride scooters or walk places encouraging a healthy lifestyle, and are far from starving.
… How is that the real China, most people live in cities
Conservatives do the same thing with America, lol. “Big cities aren’t the REAL America” like yeah sure Chudley, the 20% of Americans who live in the country are somehow more representative of the US population than the 80% who live in cities
Because a lot of people’s ideas about rural China is: “see people are POOR and DESTITUTE in rural China, the cities are TYPICAL Chinese lying, it’s all FAKE”
And I bet the people living outside the big cities are happier and healthier than the average rat race American so who the fuck cares lol